World Masters Squash Championships 2020.

This is your opportunity to play for Australia – with a full Aussie kit to impress everyone in your local club and family, and a world travel experience that is unrivalled.

The Championships

Every two years the World Masters squash championships are held as individual events for each age group, but with an overall point score championship for the large and small nation groupings.

In 2018, the Championships were played in Charlottesville USA with over 800 competitors. The Australian team with more than 70 came second to England in the large nation’s competition. We don’t want that to happen again.

Am I good enough to play?

The individual championships in each age group are open to anyone to enter. In 2020, there will be local club players in each age group from Poland and surrounding European countries. If you are playing Masters competitively in your local competition or at the Australian Masters, you are certainly good enough. Plate systems apply, so you will have at least three matches, maybe many more.

Of course, most of the best players in the world over 35 will be there playing as well. Charlottesville saw Australian players such as Sarah Fitz-Gerald, Brett Martin and Sue Hillier carry on their squash careers by becoming world champion. In 2020, they could be your teammates.

Points are scored depending on where you progress in the main draw, but also where you finish in the multiple plate events. For countries like Australia, with an historically good standard of squash, many of our players will find themselves in plate finals and semis with the possibility of scoring points for Australia.

With a large team, this will be our strength.

We are aiming to have over 100 players from Australia in Wroclaw in 2020. Sure, we want some of our past and present world champions to turn up and win, but we need every point to beat England, New Zealand, Canada, United States and South Africa to name a few.

In 2020, for the first time, we aim to have the Australian team staying at the one hotel and supporting each other in their individual matches. Just imagine a large group of Aussies in a major hotel in the middle of Wroclaw on long, warm, summer nights in August – let’s do Australia proud.

We will also make an Australian team uniform available to order before you go – probably a playing shirt and a warm-up top. We want to be a very visible presence in the world’s largest squash centre in the green and gold. And we’ll tell all the other players to talk to us because we’re friendly Aussies.

The Hasta La Vista Club

The venue for the World Masters in Poland is the world’s largest squash centre with 32 pristine Courttech courts. This means that over a thousand matches in the week will all be played in the same centre, with the best matches showcased on the glass centre court with comfortable spectator viewing.

Wroclaw – The City

Wroclaw is a university and research city of about 600,000 people in the south-west of Poland. It is recognised by many as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, with a historic 13th Century city centre. It is the capital of the region of Silesia, and has really only been part of modern Poland since 1945. The city has at times been part of the kingdoms of Bohemia, Prussia, Hungary and Germany.

The Australian Masters Squash Association, with the help of the State and Territory associations will provide some coordination to make playing for Australia in the individual championships a great social event and something you can be proud to enjoy.

We’ve appointed Travel Associates in Canberra (TA-CBR) as our coordinating agency. TA-CBR will have all the details of what is happening with the World Masters and work closely with the AMSA coordination team.

We have already identified a team hotel (the Sofitel Old Town) in the centre of Wroclaw and have reserved 50 rooms for the week – so we can socialise together.

Before and during the championships, we will set up an Australian social media group that will make it easy to coordinate all the action both on and off the courts. Based on past experience, there will be a number of official and unofficial social events planned for the week and the AMSA team will assist team members to book and get organised.

We will produce a 2020 Australian playing shirt/top and a warm-up top for you to order and receive before you go overseas.

At the Australian Masters on the Gold Coast, we will set up a contact point or arrange a special session for those thinking of travelling to Poland, so that you can ask questions and make suggestions. We really would like you to think about joining us.

Making it a European Exploration

The Championships are only for one week. For some, they will want to fly directly from Australia to Wroclaw and return when play is completed. That’s fine, TA-CBR can book your flights.

For most, we expect that you will want to take some time to visit other sensational parts of Europe before or after the Championships. You will be able to coordinate the flight bookings, hire cars, hotel and tours with TA-CBR, with any Travel Associates offices, or even with your own local travel agency who can also coordinate some aspects of the trip with the TA-CBR.

You might want to get a few friends together and make a travel group out of it. How about a few days in Prague before the Championships and a few days in Berlin to follow. We might even be able to organise a local hit or socialising with the local squash clubs.

Or fly into London or Paris and make your way across Europe by train, play in the Championships, and fly back out from Moscow or Minsk.

Where groups set up an itinerary, we can not only help to coordinate, we can share your travel plans with others if you want to build the size of the group to reduce costs.

The objective is to provide a flexible level of coordination and support that meets your individual needs and enables you to get the most out of playing in the Championships.

TA-CBR has looked at accommodation and flights and estimated about $740 for the week’s accommodation each on a twin-share basis with full breakfast in the Sofitel hotel in the Old Town, and about $1,850 for the return economy airfare. That seems pretty reasonable to us for a such an amazing opportunity to play for Australia and socialise with some of the friendliest sports people you’re likely to meet.

AMSA will also work with the keen players to see what we can do about raising some sponsorship and financial support for our highly competitive Australian team. We will use any funds to reduce the incidental costs such as entry fees, social functions and local transport. We might even use some of the funds to induce some of our great Australian world-class squash players who do not normally play in the Masters to reconsider in 2020.

Even if you are thinking the Championships might be interesting, but you’re not sure yet, register now.

By registering, we will provide you with updates and further details as we get closer to the Championships, so that the excitement can grow and you can imagine yourself playing in the green and gold on the Hasta La Vista courts with Aussie team mates cheering you on.

We will be looking for a commitment to play in the Championships by about December this year to achieve the lowest costs and the best accommodation and flights.

We expect most arrangements will be finalised by February 2020, including side trips and flights, so you can focus on your training and cutting down on fats and alcohol in preparation for representing our nation proudly (that’s a joke, by the way – the AMSA coordination team fully appreciates the energy sources required to play our great sport).

Register now and join all of us in Wroclaw in August 2020. If you haven’t been to a World Masters Squash Championships before, talk to someone who has. They keep coming back – and so will you.